Professor Airini is President and Vice-Chancellor of Thompson Rivers University, Canada, and an international university leader and scholar with more than two decades’ experience across universities, international education, and government. Her career is defined by transformation: strengthening universities and education systems, widening opportunity, building financial resilience and digital fluency, closing achievement gaps experienced by underserved learners, and turning ambitious ideas in Higher Education into durable results. 

Previously Provost and Vice-President Academic at a Canadian medical-doctoral university, Airini’s held senior academic leadership roles in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand and led education policy and system reform in Canada, New Zealand and Pacific nations. She has national awards for research and teaching in two countries and holds honorary appointments in three. 

For Airini, internationalisation means reciprocal cooperation on challenges no university or country can solve alone. An experienced UNESCO consultant, she advises the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and represented its Global Hub at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Knowledge Makers, which she co-created and receives UNFAO support, develops researchers across all seven UN regions globally, including Indigenous women as researchers. 

Her extensive governance experience spans UNESCO, national research performance assessment of universities, higher education representation, employment equity, property development, and philanthropic organisations. 

At TRU, Airini’s advancing a future-facing dual-sector research university unifying academic and research excellence with vocational and trades education; and expanded access and value through open learning and digital innovation. TRU holds a double-Platinum international STARS sustainability rating, is pursuing zero carbon by 2030, and is amongst leading universities in responsible, applied AI. 

A Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Education, Airini holds a PhD, MBA and MEd, with executive education in agentic AI (Harvard), organisations and AI (MIT) and strategy implementation (Oxford). Her ambition for universities is simple but demanding: that success for all genuinely means all.